Mix together bar codes, your mobile phone, and “Favorite Places on Google” to get a new way to window shop.
100,000 local businesses (and more in the future) have received window decals with QR bar codes that can be scanned by hundreds of mobile devices, including iPhone, Android-powered phones, BlackBerry and more, to take you directly to the business’s Place Page where you may find reviews or coupons, if they are being offered. See how it works in the video below.
This launch is part of Google’s overall effort to provide you with the best local business results whenever you’re trying to figure out where to go, “whether it’s a trendy Cuban restaurant in Philly, a comics shop in L.A., a hip hotel in NYC or a little bit of photographic history in Rochester, N.Y,” says The Official Google Blog.
They plan to periodically send out new waves of window decals to qualifying businesses. If you own or manage a business and weren’t selected in this round, your first step is to claim your listing with Google’s Local Business Center for free. That will help them determine that your business information is correct. Then, you can enhance your local business listing by adding enhanced content like photos and videos.
To explore a gallery of several hundred Favorite Places in 20 U.S. cities, to learn more about how to use the QR codes and to find out how your business can get involved, check out Google’s Favorite Places. One of my Seattle favorites is seen in the image below.
I was very excited to see Mashable’s post about Google Maps Navigation being available on nearly every Android-based phone.
When the Verizon Droid was released recently with the Android 2.0 OS and a new Google Maps Navigation system, I was jealous. Google’s Navigation app spells trouble for stand-alone GPS systems since it has nearly every desirable feature of them and is free on Android phones.
I bought the T-Mobile MyTouch phone with Android 1.6 OS when it was launched in late July. I really like Google Maps and used it and the “my location” satellite extensively on a recent trip in unknown territory. But it didn’t speak to me and give me turn-by-turn directions. Now it does!
I hadn’t received any indication that there was an update (usually I am notified when there is an update for software I have downloaded), but I went to the Android Market and looked at Google Maps. It looked like there were new features, including “Navigation, so I downloaded it and I now have Google Maps Navigation.
The upgrade includes most of the basic GPS navigation features of the new system: voice guidance, automatic route recalculation, business information, and traffic data, among other features. That’s along with Google Maps and Wikipedia information and, of course, Street View. However, the “navigate to” voice commands are missing. Hopefully, that and more will be coming in the future. Now if only I had one of those dashboard “car docks” that Droid has…
Called Google Maps Navigation (Beta), the app is a likely threat to stand-alone GPS navigation systems since it has “3D views, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic rerouting. But unlike most navigation systems, Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone’s Internet connection,” notes the Official Google Blog.
Since I just bought an Android-based phone in July (T-Mobile MyTouch), I’m both peeved that I won’t have this system right away, and hopeful that it will be available before too long on phones other than the Droid. I do love Google Maps for Mobile; it has helped me find my way around several new places, but is kind of hard to manage without voice features (reading your mobile phone while driving is a no-no).
Seven features coming to “Navigation” that I wish I had now:
Google Maps has another upgrade, although small, to make it even more useful. You can now switch seamlessly between Maps and Street View when you’re looking for an address.
When you search Google Maps you’ll find an option beneath the search result to go to Street View which takes you a street-level view with a marker right at the address or place you searched for. From there you can use the usual Street View tools to zoom around and look at the surroundings.
You also get a “Search nearby” feature which then takes you back to Maps to see other places. Click on any of them to go back to Street View and see that location relative to others in the area. In the image below I searched for Majestic Bay Theater and then did a “search nearby” for a coffee place.
Google Maps will now show you live traffic conditions on arterial roads when that information is available. I count myself fortunate to live in one of those ciites because I have just about given up on freeway travel and regularly use arterials to get around in Seattle.
Just go to Google Maps (which is free), zoom-in on the city you’re interested in, and click the “Traffic” button in the upper-right corner of the map. As you zoom in closer to an area of interest, both arterial roads and highways will show current traffic conditions through color-coding. The colors correspond to the speed of traffic relative to the speed limit of the road. “Green is free sailing, yellow is medium congestion, red is heavy congestion, and red/black is stop-and-go traffic.”
How does Google Maps know about traffic conditions? They use anonymous data from those who have Google Maps for Mobile and turn on the “my location” feature of of their GPS-enabled mobile phones. If you’ve heard of “crowdsourcing,” this is an example of it in action. Read more about how this works here. Increasingly mobile phones either come with the feature built in (such as the T-Mobile MyTouch) or it can be downloaded and used.
If you have Google Maps for Mobile, you can see the same traffic data while you’re on the road (stuck in traffic?) and add to it, too. The information could improve your morning commute, your trip through town when major sports or other events are scheduled, or just help get you to the airport on time.
“Your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you’re moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part — just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car — and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody.”
Let’s say you are mapping out a destination and want to search for several things along the route, such as gas statons and restaurants. Now you can accomplish that with ease.
After your second search, you’ll see a blue bar at the bottom of the left panel. Expand it with a click which allows you to see your searches and turn them on or off. Resulting markers are color-coded so you can tell which is which (notice the colored dot by the search name).
Another useful option was recently added to Google Maps — “What’s Here?“ Just right-click somewhere on a map and it will bring up a menu with options including “What’s here?” so you can get more information.
It’s everywhere now — Microsoft’s recently announced replacement for Live Search, called bing, to keep things short and simple. See what a search for “bing” on bing looks like to the right.
Microsoft says bing is a “search engine that finds and organizes the answers you need so you can make faster, more informed decisions.” It leads you to:
Images
Videos
Shopping
News
Maps
Travel
You can find out more about bing from Microsoft here. They claim bing overcomes current search engine deficiencies in 3 major areas by:
Delivering great search results and one-click access to relevant information
Creating a more organized search experience
Simplifying tasks and providing tools that enable insight about key decisions
Microsoft also “found that 66 percent of consumers are more focused on using the Internet to get things done, rather than to simply find information. So with bing they created more than an Internet search engine. “Instead, we created what is essentially an Internet decision engine that will help you navigate through the rampant excess of information and find the shortest distance to an informed decision.”
Get an outsider’s view of of the product from the Boston Globe.
They say that Microsoft has made serious improvements over Live Search, although not enough to catch up with Google. “But the new product is good enough to make the Google-Microsoft contest truly interesting.”
And just open today - Bing Travel, which TechCrunch notes is one of the verticals Microsoft is focusing much of its attention on with the new “decision engine” as it sets out to take market share from Google and Yahoo Search. Bing Travel combines a lot of the airfare and hotel reservation tools from Microsoft’s 2008 acquisition of Farecast with news and other editorial content from MSN Travel.
Customers will be able to take advantage of tools and features like Price Predictor (designed to forecast how airfare prices are going to evolve), Rate Indicator (set up to highlight the best hotel deals), but also Travel Deals, Comparison Flight & Hotel Search, and Fare Alerts.
As shown in the image to the left, you can easily add bing to your list of search engines to select when using Firefox.
News is spreading quickly that Google Street View has been launched in the Netherlands and a number of sites in the U.K. Now there is 360º street level imagery for Amsterdam, London, Rotterdam, Manchester, Liverpool and several other cities in these countries — 25 cities in all! Listed below as of post time:
If you want to view street level imagery for all these new locations – go to Google Maps and drag the Pegman icon to one of the new cities in Europe.
The BBC claims that 22,369 miles of roads have been imaged in the UK alone, which has taken a year to complete. Interestingly, says Google Sightseeing Blog, Google appears to have begun to run camera cars in more rural locations, as well as countries that still have no coverage at all.
I confess to being partial to both Google Maps Street View and Panoramio, which features photos contributed by users.
Now Panoramio photos have been precisely-matched to Street View images in some popular locations, giving you a richer viewing experience as you explore places on Google Maps.
Watch the YouTube video that shows you how it works.
Earlier this month, Amazon introduced theKindle 2 ebook reader (check out the link in the right sidebar), which produced a flurry of reviews.
John Biggs at CrunchGear says the Kindle is the future, but lists 10 reasons to buy and 10 reasons not to buy. Your own circumstances will dictate which way to go, assuming you have the bucks to make the purchase if that is your choice.
Biggs reasons not to buy focus mainly on his perception that Kindle is not a good research or reference tool, including for students. But its great for travelers, he notes, especially those who like to take a lot of books along with them. The new Kindle 2 can hold 1,500 books, but there is no SD slot for added memory.
There is no mention in the post of the new text-to-speech function, which is being loudly complained about by Roy Blount, president of the Authors Guild. He feels authors are being cheated by Amazon which is not paying for audio rights, unlike the publishing of traditional audio books.
I confess I haven’t heard the Kindle 2 read a book aloud. I am a big fan of audio books because I like the acting ability of the narrators, not just the capability of having a voice read to me. I always assumed that the relatively expensive cost (which I lament) of audio books paid for talented professionals who create a different experience for the listener from that of a reader of the printed work.
I haven’t seen my reason listed anywhere for not buying a Kindle ebook reader, tempted as I am because I love tech gadgets. It has to do with my reluctance to purchase books, including audio books, that I can get at the library. The kind of book I like to own these days is unlikely to be satisfactory as an ebook because it would have copious illustrations. I also read, or start to read, hundreds of books a year. A fair number of them turn out to be books I do not want or need to own.
I was very excited to see Mashable’s 
Google Maps 
It’s everywhere now — Microsoft’s 
Microsoft also “found that 66 percent of consumers are more focused on using the Internet to get things done, rather than to simply find information. So with bing they created more than an Internet search engine. “Instead, we created what is essentially an Internet decision engine that will help you navigate through the rampant excess of information and find the shortest distance to an informed decision.”
Earlier this month,